ST. GEORGE, Utah — St. George had its first large drone show Monday night, and it turns out it was a homecoming for a local resident.
Jesse Stone grew up in St. George as a baseball nut, where he was part of the state championship baseball team at Snow Canyon High and a Junior College National Championship team with what was then Dixie College.
Now he’s into the nuts and bolts of drone shows, having started droneshow.com four years ago and running the July 4 and Pioneer Day drone shows at Jordan Park up north, as well as throughout the nation in places like Miami.
As he was helping set up 145 drones on the Red Cliffs above St. George for that city’s first-ever show Monday afternoon, he felt the pressure.
“I’ve got to answer to this,” Stone said. “People in Miami don't know me. They don't know my name. They don't go to school with my kids. But here, everybody knows everybody. And so we want to make sure we're on our best behavior. I really want to do an incredible job for the family and friends and the community that's given so much to me.”
With batteries charged, drones were spaced out about a meter apart and also won’t get a meter from each other in the air. It all uses GPS satellites for positioning and all of it is programmed on laptops for precise positions and colors to create different shapes in sync with music that was played on the radio.
Stone said the LED lights on each drone could be seen for 15 miles.
“There are a lot of coders out there who have spent millions of hours and time sweat, blood and tears coding and programming this software so that it can work and activate properly so that these drones know exactly by the millimeter where they're supposed to be in space and in the air so that they never collide,” he said.
And sometimes, it doesn’t go right. Though what doesn’t go right may not be noticed by the onlookers below.
“That's the nature of technology. It's not entirely perfect, but we have safeguards in place. So if that does happen, they can still operate safely in the sky without cascading and falling to the ground,” Stone said. “It's always like hard for us when one or two drones don't take off, but for the most part, the general public, they don't observe that and they recognize the beauty that's still there.”
The Monday night show was a kick off for the weeklong Dixie Days event — also a first for St. George, celebrating the city’s heritage.
“This is a great test run for us to see whether or not, you know, the community takes to the show and enjoys that type of entertainment," said St. George operations manager Marc Mortensen. “It’s definitely a little less impactful than fireworks. The noise pollution that creates and, obviously, the harsh sounds for animals, they just won't experience that.”
Even if a drone failed, to onlookers below, the show went off smoothly Monday night with pioneer and patriotic imagery, as well as the city’s sun symbol in the sky moving along to The Beatles “Here Comes the Sun” playing in sync on local radio station KONY.
So what did the mayor think of the hometown resident’s debut in the local skies?
“I think he just wanted to give us a taste of what he could do so that we'll hire him,” St. George Mayor Michele Randall said. “I was on top of the parking garage downtown and there were a lot of people there and everyone was applauding and everyone thought it was absolutely great.”
With drone shows taking the place of fireworks spectaculars in places like Salt Lake City, could old fashioned fireworks be on the way out? Stone doesn't think so.
“The analogy I like to use is fireworks are like steak. Some people love steak, but there's only certain ways you can cook a steak. But drones are like sushi. Not everybody may love it, but there are a million ways you can create it and customize it to fit perfectly,” Stone said. “People have been attracted to fire and light, and this is just a new beautiful way to express that.”
